Classical music education in peril

Two items in a recent Sunday Star Press touched an agitated nerve: One, from my friend, Sharon Cheslick, deploring the disproportionate funding for athletics and the arts in our public schools. ) The second was Michelle Kinsey's article on the Muncie Symphony Orchestra's Music on the Move program.

While Kinsey's article reported on the positive effects of musicians going into the schools to encourage students to get involved with making music, she quotes the orchestra's executive director who says that live classical music has become a rarity. Things that become rare often become extinct.

Live, classical music is dying. The only thing that will save it is for children to re-discover it and bring it back to life. Music on the Move helps, but school bands are not adequate for resuscitating live, classical music in our communities.

Getting a child to take lessons on a string instrument is not enough, either. That would be like teaching children to shoot baskets all through public school so they could play basketball when they got to college, but without playing the game in high school. It takes ensemble playing - string orchestras from grades 6-12 to teach classical orchestral playing.

Why don't the middle schools and high schools in Delaware County have string ensemble programs? They exist in other cities, and in states all over the country. Can the school board help, or do they not see this as a need?

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

Email this article

Classical music education in peril

YVONNE WILLIAMS Muncie Two items in a recent Sunday Star Press touched an agitated nerve: One, from my friend, Sharon Cheslick, deploring the disproportionate funding for athletics and the arts in